Zigzag

by Bill Pronzini

  I agreed completely. Stiffer fines was the only way to reduce the number of idiots who believe they can safely do one or two other things while operating a couple thousand pounds of potentially lethal machinery. But David Bishop evidently hadn’t been guilty of that particular error in judgment. He’d owned a cell phone, but it had been in his coat pocket at the time of the accident and unused for any purpose since the previous night. If he’d been distracted, something else was the cause.

  I asked some more of the questions I’d put to George Orcutt, with the same lack of results. No, she didn’t know David Bishop, couldn’t remember ever seeing him prior to the accident. Yes, she knew George Orcutt slightly but couldn’t or wouldn’t say what she thought of him as a reliable witness.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me, Mrs. Blunt? Anything at all that might help clarify what took place that day?”

  “I wish there was, but no, I—” She broke off, frowning, the way you do at a sudden memory jog. “Oh. Oh, wait. Floyd Mears.”

  “Floyd Mears?”

  “I just remembered. He pulled out of the service station in that big white pickup of his just as I passed. Yes, I’m sure he did.”

  “He was behind you when the accident happened?”

  “He must have been. A short distance behind. But he wasn’t there when I stopped and got out after the crash.”

  “Turned off the highway?”

  “No, he couldn’t have. There’s no other road between the service station and Ridgecrest. In all the excitement and confusion I completely forgot about him at the time, or else I’d have told the officers.” Mrs. Blunt sat forward, peering at a point over my right shoulder while she worked her memory. “He must have made a sudden U-turn. I seem to have a vague recollection of his pickup going away in the opposite direction.”

  “So he could also have witnessed the collision.”

  She said, purse-lipped, “And drove away to avoid becoming involved. That would be just like the man.”

  I wondered if George Orcutt had seen Floyd Mears following Mrs. Blunt and then U-turn away from the scene of the accident. No surprise that he hadn’t told me if so, as uncooperative as he’d been.

  “I take it Mears is local,” I said. “Do you know him well?”

  “No one knows him well. He keeps to himself, hardly has a civil word for anybody.”

  “Can you tell me where he lives?”

  “In the hills somewhere between Rio Verdi and Monte Rio, I don’t know exactly where. Grace Hammond at the market might be able to tell you.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “I don’t really know, except that he hunts deer and sells venison to Grace now and then. You’d have to ask him.”

  “I will when I talk to him.”

  “If you talk to him,” Mrs. Blunt said. “He’s an unfriendly cuss, Floyd Mears is. I’d be surprised to hear he gave you the time of day, let alone admitted to witnessing the accident.”

  3

  The drizzle had stopped by the time I rolled up and over heavily wooded Walker Hill and picked out the narrow, muddy access lane to Floyd Mears’ property from the landmarks Grace Hammond had given me. It was getting on toward four o’clock by then, the combination of overcast sky and dense pine and redwood forest creating a wet, dusklike gloom. If there were any other homes in the vicinity, they were well hidden. It had been a quarter of a mile since the last driveway before this one had appeared and then disappeared among the trees.

  I turned in at a crawl in deference to the muddy surface and the fact that the lane led downhill, gradually at first, more steeply and crookedly after I crossed a platform bridge spanning a slender, fast-running creek. I’d gone a hundred yards or so before the lane curved, the trees thinned, and a broad clearing opened up ahead. Not one but three structures squatted there, all of them built of rough-hewn redwood—a good-sized cabin and two outbuildings off to one side.

  Floyd Mears was home: a newish, mud-streaked, white four-door Dodge Ram pickup was parked near the largest of the outbuildings and light leaked through the cabin’s front window. A little surprisingly, given Earline Blunt’s description of him as unfriendly and reclusive, he already had company. A second vehicle, this one a nondescript Ford van several years older, was angled in behind the pickup. The visitor probably reduced even more my chances of getting Mears to talk to me.

  I parked and got out onto a rough carpeting of wet pine-needled grass. It was quiet here except for the dripping of rainwater from tree branches and a faint clattering noise that seemed to come from the smallest, shedlike outbuilding. Nobody came out of the cabin. That was a little surprising, too. My car is eight years old and not the quietest vehicle on the road; they must have heard me jouncing in along the lane.

  There was no front porch, just three steps to a little landing before the door. I went up and used my knuckles—once, twice, three times. Still nobody showed. Well, maybe they were in one of the outbuildings or out in the woods for some reason. Or maybe Mears had seen me through the window and just wasn’t opening up to a stranger.

  I tried knocking again, gave it up, and slogged over the wet ground toward the other structures. The clattering noise grew louder and I could also hear the throb of a motor as I passed the smaller shed. Generator, a large one with a troublesome bearing—Mears’ sole source of electricity, evidently. The only wires anywhere on the property ran from that shed to both its larger neighbor and the cabin.

  The other shed was set farther back against the pine woods, its facing side a blank wall against which cordwood was stacked under a hanging tarp. The entrance was around on the near side. When I turned the corner I saw the door—and something else that pulled me up short, set up a prickly sensation on the back of my skull.

  A dead dog lay half-hidden in the grass just beyond the door.

  Big Doberman, its jaws hinged open and teeth bared in a rictal snarl. A fifteen- or twenty-foot length of chain ran from a leather collar around its neck to an iron spike ring that had been driven into one of the trees. The animal had been there for some time, more than a few hours. Its fur was sodden, there was a buildup of rainwater in its upturned ear pocket, and the two raw wounds that had killed it, one in its side, the other in the ruff of its neck, had been washed free of blood. Bullet wounds. I’d seen enough in my time to identify them without going any closer.

  I stood for a couple of seconds, tensed, listening. Rain drip, the hum and clatter of the generator. No other sounds. Then I did an about-face and walked fast back to the car; leaned in to release the catch on the panel beneath the dash where I keep my .38 Colt Bodyguard. Automatic reaction to strange and potentially dangerous surroundings. Better safe than sorry, always.

  I slid the weapon into my coat pocket, kept my hand on it as I went back to the shed. Still nothing new to hear on the way, or when I edged up close to the entrance. I banged on the thick, tight-fitting door, using my fist this time. No response. The door was not locked; the knob turned easily when I tried it. All right, then. Illegal trespass is usually a bad idea, but the murdered dog justified it here. I turned the knob all the way, opened the door.

  I expected cold semidarkness; what I got was humidity and a blaze of light that made me blink and squint. Both light and humidity came from a series of high-wattage LED hooded reflectors hanging in rows over three-quarters of the interior. Beneath them, on shelves, were dozens of green plants in various stages of growth. The shed had no windows, but ducting ran from an exhaust fan into a hole cut in the back wall. There was a small dehumidifier, and gardening tools, paper bags, and a loose scattering of plastic containers on a workbench. The containers were empty except for a greenish-gray residue. More of the same substance, a mixture of dried, shredded leaves, stems, seeds, and flower buds, was sprinkled over the bench top.

  Indoor pot farm.

  So now I knew what Floyd Mears did for a living. Not that I cared much in principle; marijuana growing and selling is already legal in some states and others
would soon follow, California included. Everybody to his vice, as long as no innocent parties get hurt in the process. Except that innocent parties do get hurt sometimes, and not only humans. That Doberman outside. Guard dog, probably. Blown away by somebody who wanted access to cured weed ready for smoking and/or sale. The containers strewn over the bench, another that had fallen to the floor, indicated a quick search and grab.

  A bad feeling had begun to work in me. There was no sign of either Mears or his visitor in here. The cabin, then? I backed out of the shed, shut the door, crossed back over there.

  The first thing I did was stretch up on the spongy ground under the window and look through a narrow aperture between the curtain halves. All I could see was a small section of the front room. Table, one chair toppled on its side, and another upright at a skewed angle as if it had been violently shoved backward. The only other things I could make out were a woodstove and a small stack of cordwood.

  I did not want to go inside. But the bad feeling was even stronger now, and there are some things you simply can’t avoid doing. If the cabin was empty, then all right, I could drive away from here without any further involvement and with a clear conscience. The murder of the dog and running of a small-scale marijuana farm were misdemeanors and none of my business as such.

  If the cabin was empty.

  But it wasn’t.

  The door was unlocked, so access was no problem. I rapped on it again, waited, then shoved it open wide and leaned in without entering. I could see more of the room then. Part of a larder and a makeshift kitchen with a kerosene stove, an open doorway into what was probably a bedroom—and a dead man sprawled across the threshold.

  He lay twisted on his right side, his face turned toward me. A welter of dried blood shone darkly across the fronts of an open leather jacket and white shirt. Shot like the Doberman. How many times I couldn’t tell. Not self-inflicted, even though there was a gun, what looked to be a Saturday night special, loosely clenched in one outflung hand.

  That should have been enough for me to keep from entering, but it wasn’t. One man dead, two vehicles parked in the yard—that didn’t add up the way it should. I went on in.

  Murder, all right.

  Two victims, not just one.

  The second dead man was in a seated posture on the floor, propped against the wall on the far side of the room, his legs spread out in an inverted V. Blood all over him, too, and streaked down the rough-hewn boards above him. Shot while backing up and the force of impact had slammed him into the wall. On the planking beside the body was a large-caliber automatic on an aluminum frame. I couldn’t tell how many times he had been hit, either, but it was plain enough that they’d both cut loose with several rounds each; bullet holes pocked the walls at both ends of the room.

  I’m no stranger to crime scenes, God knows, but a double homicide like this was something new and ugly in my experience. And the way I’d walked into it gave it an even more nightmarish quality. Drive up to the Russian River on a routine job, get a name I’d never heard before as a possible accident witness, come out here and stumble onto a shed full of marijuana and a dog and two strangers shot to death. One of those crazy zigzags that leave you feeling unlucky and faintly disoriented.

  I stood motionless for several seconds, sucking deep lungfuls of cold air, automatically taking in details. The corpse on the floor between the two rooms: forty or so, short red hair, fireplug build, dressed in the once-white shirt and corduroy jacket and a pair of slacks. The one sitting against the wall: a few years older, thickset, beard-stubbled jowls, bald except for thin comb-over strands of straggly brown hair, wearing Levi’s and a plaid lumberman’s shirt. Mears? The room was cold and damp—no fire in the woodstove in a long while; the all too familiar stench of sudden violent death was faint, and from the appearance of the bodies, rigor had come and gone. The shootings must have taken place sometime last night.

  Marijuana deal gone bad, the way it looked—the kind of thing that happens all too often these days, though it usually involves large and street-valuable amounts of weed. Both men armed, an argument of some kind, out came the guns like a couple of trigger-happy cowboys drawing on each other in a western B movie, and they’d blazed away until they were both down for the count. That kind of stupid scenario.

  A little funny that such a thing would happen here, considering the kind of small growing operation I’d seen in the shed. Not that it mattered as far as I was concerned. The local law’s headache, not mine.

  I backed out of there, opened my cell phone on the way to the car. The fact that I was able to get a clear signal in a place surrounded by dense forest was a relief.

  4

  Crime scene investigation, whether big city, suburban, or rural, pretty much follows the same established pattern. Slow, methodical, meticulous routine. I’d been through it so many times, as investigating officer and witness both, I could write a full-length, dully repetitive book about my experiences. When you’re in the position I was in here, it’s a tedious and seemingly interminable process made even worse by the fact that I was dealing with strangers in unfamiliar, somewhat isolated territory.

  The routine is unpleasant no matter which side you’re on, but easier if you’re part of the crew because you’re busy all the while. For a material witness it’s static and numbing. Sit and wait, answer questions from the first responders, sit and wait, answer questions from the second wave and men in charge, sit and wait some more. The only good part was that no suspicion was directed at me once I showed my ID and explained the job that had brought me to Rio Verdi and then to Floyd Mears’ property. For most of the three-plus hours I was required to remain on the scene I was shunted out of the way and left alone.

  Cell phone reception was pretty good here; I called Tamara, who was still at the agency, to tell her what had gone down today, then Kerry at Bates and Carpenter and Emily at home to let them know I’d be late and not to wait dinner. All I said to them was that I’d gotten unavoidably hung up; they did not need to know the unpleasant details. After that I sat in the car and vegetated. Jake Runyon has a knack for shutting himself down at times like this, sort of like a computer put into sleep mode, but I’ve never been able to master that ability. My thoughts tend to run riot while I’m on a protracted wait, skipping from one subject to another indiscriminately, so that I end up feeling antsy and disgruntled. Patience has never been one of my long suits even at the best of times.

  The officer in charge, a county sheriff’s department lieutenant named Heidegger, came around and finally told me I was free to leave. He’d been brusquely efficient in his questioning earlier, but now he just seemed solemn and tired. He was about fifty, thick bodied, square shouldered—a career law officer who’d evidently dealt with as much if not more violence than I had and almost but not quite become inured to it.

  “Regular shooting gallery in there,” he said. “We counted nine rounds fired, four hits and five misses.”

  “Gunslingers,” I said.

  “Yeah. One of the dead guys is Floyd Mears. I guess you figured that. The other, according to the wallet we found on him, is Ray Fentress, F-e-n-t-r-e-s-s, address in your city. Name mean anything to you?”

  “Ray Fentress. No.”

  “And you’d never seen him before?”

  “Never saw either of them before.”

  “Reason I asked is that I called in for a computer check on the name and he’s an ex-con, less than a week out of Mule Creek after doing eighteen months on an assault conviction.” Mule Creek was a minimum-security prison in Ione, up in the foothills east of Sacramento. “What I can’t figure is why he’d come all the way up here to buy dope from a small-timer like Mears.”

  “Some past tie between them, maybe.”

  “Sure, but why come armed? Why deal with a man, even one you knew personally, if you thought you needed self-protection?”

  “Self-protection might not be the reason.”

  “Robbery?”

  “Could be,
if there was a lot of cannabis and money at stake.”

  “But there wasn’t,” Heidegger said. “Not that we’ve been able to find. Just a small amount of weed in one of Fentress’ pockets, couldn’t be worth more than a few hundred dollars at street prices, and a stash in Mears’ bedroom worth about the same. And less than seventy-five dollars cash total on the two of them, their vehicles, and the premises.”

  “Well, the get-together last night could’ve been to set up a deal for later, and for some reason it went prematurely sour.”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  “I can think of another explanation,” I said. “Third party involved. Somebody who shot both men and then the dog for however much dope was stored in the shed.”

  “Yeah, that occurred to me, too,” Heidegger said. “But there doesn’t seem to be much doubt that Mears and Fentress blew each other away, and unless we find out Mears’ cottage industry was a lot bigger than what’s in that shed, there wouldn’t have been enough weed or cash to make anybody in his right mind commit homicide.”

  “Then who shot the Doberman? And why? And when?”

  “Fentress, so he could get into the shed to get the dope we found on him. Mears came home and caught him, Fentress threw down on him, they went into the cabin to talk things over—”

  “—and Mears pulled his piece and the shooting started. Makes sense, I guess.”

  “As much as any other explanation,” Heidegger said. “I’ll tell you, I hate complicated crimes. I sure hope this one turns out to be just what it looks like.” He sighed heavily. “None of your worry in any case. I’ll need a written statement from you, but we can do that by fax. Unless your accident investigation brings you back up to the county in the near future.”

  “Doesn’t look as though it will, now.”

  And finally I was out of there for the long drive home.

  * * *

  I faxed my statement to the Sonoma County sheriff’s department the following day, and that should have been the end of my involvement. But it wasn’t. The world is a sometimes strange and perverse place, as we all know from experience, and my profession occasionally fraught with the kind of unforeseen twists that had led me to Floyd Mears in the first place.